Fishy Riot, page 13
“What’s your obsession with Vikings?”
“Micah loves that show.”
Taylor suspected he’d lost whatever semiargument they’d been having. But really, he’d lost the moment his father handed out the invite, and really… what could go wrong? “Just remember I warned you.”
But Sietta was smiling, and that was all that mattered. Taylor let the matter drop and went about putting something together for dinner, scrounging some chicken breasts from the freezer, a packet of stir fry veg, and some Hokkien noodles and making a stir fry in the wok. Fast and simple, it was one of his favourite things to make.
“That smells really good….” Sietta came over to see what he was doing and stared wide-eyed at the full wok and the herbs Taylor was throwing in.
“You didn’t think I could cook, did you?”
“Actually, I figured one of you could, I mean….” He gestured at Taylor idly, and it made Taylor preen a little, happy because Sietta liked what he saw. It was obvious in the hint of red on his cheeks and the way his gaze never shifted away from him.
“But you assumed it was Clay?”
“No, I figured he’d make you trade off, so you both had to be able to.”
“You’re right.” Taylor swirled the noodles in the wok, not surprised by the correct assumption, but delighted, as usual, by Sietta seeing things for what they were. “Are you allergic to anything?” He should have asked that beforehand.
“Not a thing,” Sietta assured him, moving around the bench and rummaging in the cupboard, getting out two bowls and forks and putting the kettle on for another cup of tea.
“You drink a lot of tea,” Taylor observed, trying not to judge.
“I haven’t had hot drinks in years,” Sietta confessed, and Taylor bit his lip and watched Sietta flick through the few boxes of tea they had, choosing a green variety Joel had brought over.
“Sorry. Not… not for pointing it out, I just… I’m sorry you couldn’t even have simple things. I’m not sorry for sticking my foot in it, because honestly I think you need that, and obviously no one else is saying anything so….”
“Thank you,” Sietta interrupted, and the wide smile on his face did strange things to Taylor’s stomach, twisting it into all kinds of pretzels. Taylor forced himself to count backward until the throbbing in his groin eased.
“No, really… what you’ve done is amazing and might actually change the way politics work in this country, force things to be more public and transparent, but… I wish it hadn’t been you, anyway. Not that I wish it was someone else, just….”
“I get it! Geez, stop talking!” But he’d gotten a laugh from Sietta, who served up his tea when the kettle boiled and went to sit on the couch, still chuckling and stealing glances over at Taylor. “I’m not sorry, either, you know? I could have run, or figured something out a long time ago. It was my choice to stay. I wanted to damn him, and I did.” There was no question as to who “he” was. Taylor finished dishing up the food into two bowls, and carried them over, not bothering to ask, then sitting beside Sietta and putting a bowl in his lap.
“Eat. I think the wine cellar stunted your growth.” Another laugh, and Taylor smirked, delighted when Sietta curled in against his side and happily ate everything put in front of him.
“JUST REMEMBER… you chose to come,” Taylor muttered under his breath. Sietta sat calmly beside him in the passenger seat of Taylor’s black Hilux, which only made Sietta look small and fragile. It made Taylor nervous, and he scolded himself again for ever agreeing to bring Sietta along. But it really hadn’t been his choice; his father had invited him, and Sietta had made a point of reminding him every hour the day before, and again at six that morning. Today was Saturday. Which was family barbeque day. Worse, the boss had demanded they take the day off after the raids while the AFP worked through all the paperwork. He’d also told Taylor to somehow magically heal his face, as the boss’s boss had asked about it and made him nervous. How he was supposed to achieve this, Taylor had no idea.
“It’s only lunch. Right?”
“If someone gave me the choice between being locked in the wine cellar and attending lunch?” Taylor nodded into the silence. Hell yes, he would take the wine cellar. But to hear Sietta laugh like that, he could be convinced to go to lunch, sure.
He pulled onto his parents’ street, right behind Clay, who was in Joel’s car. Micah was in the rear seat, face pressed to the back window, waving at them like a maniac. Sietta waved back with equal enthusiasm but didn’t bother trying for more, because they were pulling up to the curb anyway, and before Taylor could get the engine turned off, Micah was out of Joel’s car and at Sietta’s window, waiting impatiently for Sietta to open the door.
“Hey.” Taylor met Clay and Joel on the kerb, shaking his head at Clay’s uncharacteristically wild hair. “Couldn’t find a brush at the Professor’s house?”
“I’m sorry, do you think I have any possessions left now I’ve got a gay teenage son in my house?” Joel quirked a brow at him, but he looked as calm and put together as always, and Taylor knew he had no complaints about the situation.
Taylor liked Joel. If he’d had to imagine the perfect partner for Clay, Joel was not a thing like what he would have thought of. But he was perfect. He had no interest at all in the law, as long as he didn’t have to break it. He didn’t care about shift work, as long as he knew what time someone was going to be at his house. He was calm, had a wicked sense of humour, was way smarter than Taylor understood anything about, and he was nice on the eyes. But the best part was simply that Clay adored him. Was, quite simply, besotted with the man, and had been from the moment they met. If Joel ever cheated, he was dead, but he understood that loud and clear, so they were all good.
Ashley’s car pulled up behind where he’d parked, and Taylor gaped at it. The bumper held on for dear life, though how he couldn’t quite figure out. The roof completely caved in at the back in a suspiciously man-shaped gouge. One of the tyres was so flat, he shouldn’t have been driving on it, and one side of the paint was peeling off, black and melted from a fire. Ashley climbed out in his overalls, and Taylor could smell him easily. It wasn’t pleasant.
“Ash… the hell?” Clay waved at the car. Joel, smartly, was covering his amazement with his hands on his face. Micah was already bolting over to get a good look when another car screeched around the corner.
“No plates,” Taylor squinted at the windscreen, but he couldn’t see much through the glare.
“Gun!” Clay bellowed at the same moment Taylor saw the glint of sunlight on metal through the open passenger window. The crack of gunfire shattered the relative quiet of the neighbourhood, and the whole place fell into chaos.
Instincts were strange things. Too engrained, and as soon as the word gun was vocalised, he and Clay were moving in synch, racing for loved ones. Clay body slammed Joel into the ground, rolled, and reached for Micah’s ankle, but the kid was already on the ground, wide-eyed and terrified. Taylor lunged for Sietta, who had been leaning on the side of the Hilux, grabbing his wrist and tossing him to the ground as the gun fired again.
Someone screamed in pain, there was shouting coming from the house, doors opening and slamming, but Taylor had eyes only for Sietta, who was staring up at him from where he’d tossed him on the ground, looking as stunned by the action as Joel.
Brayden’s familiar white doctor shoes appeared near Sietta’s head, sliding to a halt on the freshly mowed lawn.
All Taylor did was check Sietta was okay, and then he was off, trusting Brayden to get everyone safely out of the way. Taylor sprinted down the road after the car, Clay in perfect harmony beside him.
“Duck!” Ashley bellowed from back near the driveway.
They hit the asphalt, and Taylor watched in horrified fascination as an axe sailed past where he’d been, and slammed into the back tyre of the fleeing car. The blowout caused it to careen off the road, slamming through the neighbours’ fence and smashing into their shiny Commodore.
The front doors of the car opened and two men tried to get out, but Clay and Taylor were already up, leaping over the fence. The driver didn’t even manage to get out of the car. Taylor threw himself against the door and trapped him inside, while Clay hauled his accomplice from the car and slammed him into the ground face first, grabbing his hands and holding them in a lock against his back. Taylor tried to get a look over the car at what was going on, but the driver grabbed the gun off the passenger-side floor and shot at Taylor through the glass, and he was forced to duck behind the door.
Furious, Taylor grabbed the handle, opened the door, and when the idiot aimed the gun out the gap, he slammed the door back on the dumb prick’s arm, smirking at the satisfying crunch that followed.
“Clay! What on earth are you doing to that poor man?” Their mother bellowed from her house, and they groaned together.
“Mum! Call the damn cops! We’re arresting the fuckers! You know, because they shot at us? Are you deaf or something?” Taylor watched Clay drag the driver, and his broken arm, from the car and got him on the ground beside his derelict friend.
“Oh! I thought it was a car backfiring!”
“Nope!” Clay was sweating now that the adrenaline was starting to wear off.
“I called the cops!” Brayden bellowed down the road. “They’ll be here in ten!”
“Okay!” Clay looked at Taylor over the car and shook his head. “Do you think they could maybe not yell at us down the damn street?”
“Do you boys want some lemonade?”
“No!” They bellowed in unison. “Just… go wait out the back of the house, Mum!” Taylor wandered around the car to Clay, shaking his head and pushing the driver’s face harder into the cement when he dared laugh at them.
“Where did you even get a freakin’ gun,” Taylor asked him darkly. “And why did you decide to come try and shoot me?”
“Weren’t trying to shoot you,” the driver grumbled, and Taylor twisted his broken arm to shut him up. He could explain what the hell he’d thought he was doing to the boss; Taylor wasn’t supposed to be working today.
“Shit…. Tay….” Clay was gaping at him, and Taylor frowned, looked down at his shirt, and realised there was a large red splash seeping down his chest. Now that he was looking at it, he realised it hurt. A whole lot. And that was actually a lot of blood….
“Ah, fuck. You shot me!” He kicked the driver in the hip, annoyed more than anything. The driver yelped, trying to say something, but Taylor wasn’t listening to him, looking at Clay and trying to be reassuring even as he was starting to feel decidedly woozy. “It’s not that bad, Clay.”
Clay had that look on his face Taylor knew meant he was trying to decide something, and then Taylor’s day got a thousand times worse.
“Brayden!” Clay bellowed down the street.
“What?”
“Are we seriously going to keep screaming down the street?” Taylor muttered, looking at the hole in his shoulder and moving it back and forth to see where the pain was. The bullet seemed to have grazed over his collarbone and through the far edge of his trap. It really wasn’t that bad, which sort of amused him because everyone was yelling about it.
“Tay’s shot!” Clay screeched. There was nothing manly about the sound, and it was followed by more screeching off down the road, and then Brayden and Hayley were sprinting up the road, a first aid kit hanging off Hayley’s shoulder.
“Great. Now look what you’ve done.” Taylor scowled at Clay, but his brother glared at him.
“I’m not the one who got shot! What, couldn’t see the damn gun past your black eye?” Oh, so now it was fine to make fun of his face? Clay must be more worried than Taylor had thought. It made him pause and look down at his shirt again. Maybe if he hadn’t worn a white T-shirt it wouldn’t have looked as bad.
“Shit, Taylor… you need to lie down,” Brayden ordered as soon as he came around his side of the car.
“Oh sure, let me just let the driver go, and I’ll get right on that, yeah?”
“Shut up, you don’t get to be a smartass while you’re bleeding on everything!”
“Who the hell cares if I bleed on the guy who shot me?” Taylor asked, incredulous. His siblings were terrible people, that was all there was to it.
“Technically, this guy shot you… I think.” Clay pointed out from his side of the car. “I dunno… which bullet do you think got you? I’m thinking the second one, back down the street? That’s a lot of blood for it to have been just before….”
“How the hell should I know which bullet shot me?” Taylor snapped, annoyed that he couldn’t swat Brayden’s hands away as he came and started poking at the wet shirt, trying to see how bad it was.
“I think it went straight through… yeah, there’s an exit wound… hold still.” He was poking and prodding, and Taylor forced himself to remain still and quiet as Brayden and Hayley tried to stop the bleeding and get some kind of bandage in place while he and Clay stood guard over the shooters. The driver kept demanding his own medical attention, and everyone ignored him. His friend had the sense to stay quiet.
It wasn’t ten minutes when the familiar sound of sirens filled the air, and then the black van Taylor considered a home away from home rounded the corner.
“What the… you called the riot squad?” Taylor ground out through the pain, glaring at Brayden, who ignored him and bandaged Taylor’s shoulder with gauze and tape.
“I have your office on speed dial. It’s faster than calling triple zero.”
“Do you see a riot?” Taylor tried to make him see his point, wondering how he was the only sane person present.
“You’re here,” Hayley pointed out. Taylor was starting to feel light-headed.
Uniforms filled the street, and suddenly Ben Harris, youngest member of their team, was in front of Taylor in full riot squad uniform, looking as out of place as ever. He looked like he should be on a beach with a board under his arm.
Ben forced Taylor off the driver, letting Brayden haul him away, back down the street to their parents’ house. Clay moved ahead of him, leaving their squad to take care of the criminals.
Joel was still on the ground, though he’d managed to get himself into a sitting position. Sietta was rubbing his knee, also on the ground, Micah at his side, wide-eyed and clearly stunned by the proceedings.
“You got shot?” Sietta asked weakly, though it was obvious he didn’t expect an answer; he was simply stating the obvious in his shock.
“It’s not that bad.” Taylor shrugged with the shoulder that didn’t have a hole in it, and tried to avoid the scowls of his siblings. “Brayden’ll stitch me up. It’ll be fine.”
“Oh God, Tay, you’re covered in blood!” His mother gasped, and Taylor looked heavenward, praying for some kind of miracle. Like another drive-by with a better shooter to put him out of his misery.
“He got shot, Mum. Of course he’s covered in blood!” Hayley was pulling open his car door, and Taylor sighed because he didn’t want to go to the hospital. He just wanted to go home and sleep, preferably with Sietta.
“I don’t need to go to the hospital!”
“Excuse me?” His mother was suspiciously quiet, so Taylor let them sit him in the passenger seat, though he insisted on a towel to protect his interior from the blood. That stuff never came out.
“What happened to your knee?” Taylor looked over at Sietta where he was still on the ground, rubbing it, Micah at his side. He got a frown in reply, and Joel snorted. Taylor looked from one to the other and sighed, realising he and Clay had each thrown their loved ones with a little too much force in their need to get them to the ground.
“It’s fine, we’ll just have bruises,” Joel soothed quietly, looking amused now that things were calming down, and letting Clay help him to his feet while Micah did the same. Taylor was relieved when Sietta immediately stepped up beside the car, leaning in to tentatively stroke the makeshift bandage, meeting his gaze solemnly.
“I’ll be fine,” Taylor assured him, genuinely unconcerned. Brayden would fix him up; he had no doubts about that.
Brayden’s wife, Kelly, appeared in the doorway, holding Jay against her side, but Emma ran out into the yard, looking around with wide eyes and mouth agape at all the things going on. Brayden was about to yell at her to go back into the house, but Emma suddenly threw her hands in the air, so much like her father, and the most disgusted snort possible came from her mouth.
“Uncle Ash, what the hell did you do to your car?” You would think Emma had paid for the car herself, with the amount of indignation in her voice.
All attention turned back to Ashley, who was still standing in the driveway, in his yellow overalls and blue T-shirt. His car stood behind him, completely black down one side, missing windows now Taylor took the time to look at it, the back end flattened and the tyre still close to dead. Dead silence reigned on the street, even the riot squad had turned to stare.
Ashley looked from Emma, over his shoulder to the car, and then back to Emma, and the grin that split his face was ecstatic.
“I got to fight a fire, Em! It was huge! I got sent in to save this guy stuck on the second floor, but then the fire collapsed the stairs and we couldn’t get out, and the ladder stuck, so we jumped from the window and landed on my car! See?” He pointed to the flattened bit, apparently oblivious to Emma’s widening eyes and mouth and the way she leaned forward in horror at his story. “And then the windows exploded and my car lit on fire! Because I was just leaving when the fire got called in, and I thought I would go make sure they didn’t need my help, so I’d followed the truck and parked behind it….”
“You’re an idiot!” Emma bellowed, standing there in her crisp white summer dress, hair immaculately tied up in pigtails, pink sandals on her feet.
One of the riot squad officers snickered. Then another, then everyone was yelling. Emma stormed back over to Kelly, who smartly took her children back inside, informing Brayden he could pick her up when he got back from the hospital.
